Potty Training

After a few false starts, we started committed potty training this week. By that, I mean that this time I'm really sticking with it. No more giving up--at least for today. Before I started this most recent effort, I read a book about early potty training, which it turns out can mean anywhere from 4 months to 18 months, depending on what one thinks of as early. My momma always taught me that babies under the age of a year who are supposedly potty trained, aren't. It's their parents that are potty trained, but after dealing with a reluctant two-year-old, I'm starting to see the benefits of potty training early. Sure, the parents do most of the work, but the kid is used to the potty long before she can pull her own pants down, meaning that when that day arrives, it's not traumatic or temper-tantrum inducing.

Now that said, I also realize that I'm not dedicated enough to learn Evie's signals for eliminating (as the book so nicely puts it), and I don't want to carry around a potty for those times when we're out shopping and she gives me the signal that it's time to drop trou. But it did get me thinking about getting on the stick with Anna. Several more experienced moms have told me to just wait until Anna tells me that she's ready and that's what I originally planned to do. They all promise that when she's ready, the potty training will be over in a day, but I've also heard about four-year-olds that refuse to give up their diapers. Then I read that lower-income families and single moms tend to potty train earlier than more affluent families, the theory being that the cost of diapers motivates some to get their kids out of them. My book also promotes the conspiracy theory that the diaper companies are behind the movement to hold off on the diaper training until the kid is ready. I admit that I'm a little bit competitive and I figure if lower-income families can do it, then I certainly can too. I don't know that I entirely buy into the diaper company conspiracy, but Huggies does feel a little bit like The Man.

So with all of that in mind, yesterday I put Anna in her training pants and committed to keep her in them all day, no matter what. It was tough. She "went wet" in the potty once in the morning and it really didn't count since she didn't put much at all in the potty. Every time I put her on her potty, she'd hold it until we put the panties on and then it all came out. "I went wet Momma!" all over my floor. I only have three pairs of training pants--I told her I was saving the Elmo panties until she could keep her training pants dry--but by eleven in the morning, I was out of clean training pants. I'd also learned to put her plastic swimming pants on over the training pants and that helped a bit with the mess. By the end of the day, I was at a loss as to how to get her to actually eliminate in the potty. It was also getting to be quite a fight to get her to sit on the potty because that was boring.

So this morning, I gave in a little bit and put the potty in front of the TV. I was hoping to keep the TV out of the equation, but I decided that it was more important to get her to sit on the potty until she could become comfortable actually using it. She sat on the potty most of the day and successfully eliminated in the potty five or more times, which was a huge improvement over yesterday. True, she was sort of hypnotized by the TV, which didn't leave much room for accidents, but at least she's not holding it in until she gets off the potty. I've got to celebrate any victory no matter how little. We did have a few accidents, so I gave up on saving the Elmo panties when once again I ran out of the training pants early in the day.

I guess the next big step is to get her to figure out how to recognize that she needs to eliminate before she actually does, but I figure that might take a few days. My goal for tomorrow is to get her to regularly sit on the potty a few minutes before she needs to eliminate, rather than leaving her on the potty all day with the TV running. We'll see how that goes since she's not going to be too happy about giving up the TV.